Principal’s Welcome

Dear CAT Students and Families,

I am excited and honored to be the Principal of City Arts and Technology (CAT) High School. As a former teacher for Envision Schools, I am delighted to rejoin the organization in an administrative capacity and look forward to partnering with you in preparing and supporting CAT students both academically and personally throughout their secondary education.

At CAT, we believe it is our job to ensure that every CAT graduate leaves high school with the knowledge and skills necessary to enter, succeed in, and graduate from college. We recognize that our community is diverse and thus, students come to CAT with a variety of interests, talents, goals, and challenges. We welcome and value this diversity and work collaboratively as a professional community to empower our students to excel in whichever educational, personal, and professional paths they choose to pursue.

Because our goal at CAT is to build students’ academic and leadership skills, Envision’s educational model requires students to demonstrate mastery in many areas including: literacy, critical thinking, problem solving, public speaking, group collaboration, and creative expression. Through the College Success Portfolio and Defense system, students get the opportunity to showcase their best work before a panel of teachers, students, and administrators who evaluate their academic skills, growth, reflectiveness and most importantly their preparedness for college.

While the College Success Portfolio process is challenging, your student is never alone in meeting the challenge. CAT teachers and staff work tirelessly to tutor, mentor, and advocate for their students. In addition to being classroom instructors, every CAT teacher serves as an academic advisor. The primary role of an academic advisor is to monitor their advisees’ progress towards graduation, to coordinate their advisees’ parent-teacher conferences, and to help their advisees develop a strong academic identity and sense of responsibility to themselves and their communities.

This year at CAT we are excited to offer students a particularly rigorous and enriching six-period class schedule and instructional program. In addition to adding Advanced Placement courses such as AP Economics and AP Spanish, we have added new and interesting elective classes including: Drama, Psychology, Ethnic Studies, an International Environmental Law course, and a Holocaust and Human Behavior course amongst other options. To help students be successful in their core academic and elective classes, we also offer several reading, math, and study skills courses. These courses are designed to give students the necessary individualized support and remediation to build their foundational skills and ultimately prepare them for the rigorous demands of their secondary and post-secondary college and career paths.

In closing, while the CAT community is committed to pushing its students to excel academically, to put it plainly – we like to have fun! Our clubs, athletic programs, dances, spirit competitions, Community Meetings, and awards celebrations offer students the opportunity to laugh, unwind, and build relationships with their peers and CAT staff members outside of the classroom.

I invite you to take a few minutes to explore our website to learn more about our mission and educational program. Even better, I hope you will schedule some time to visit our school and see firsthand the work we are doing to push and inspire young people.

With regards,

 

Brianna Winn, Ed.M
Principal, City Arts & Technology High School